AN:/ Thank you for your patience.

They had been fortunate to avoid any conflicts with monsters for days, but it was as they made their way to a crack in the Crater wall that Vahana had said the Planet had directed her to in her dreams that their luck failed.

Foolishly, they chose to press on to the pathway that Vahana was sure was there instead of turning to fight, but after twenty minutes of running and climbing they ended up reaching the crack with a pack of misshapen beasts swarming towards them.

Cloud counted at least forty of them, all wrong in some visceral way. Some would have been snakelike if they had one head and two eyes; some would have been indistinguishable from a Chobobo if their skin hadn't had an oily sheen and scales. All looked intelligent, and although Cloud dispatched the ones that caught up to them it barely impacted the numbers chasing them.

"Go on ahead," Cloud shouted back. "I can buy you time!"

"Right," Vahana yelled over the noise of the fight, and disappeared through the crevice. If Cloud had had the time or energy to spare, he could probably have heard her rattle down the pass – but he didn't dare take any of his attention from the fight.

A minute of two after she'd gone, however, Cloud suddenly found the monsters backing away. They seemed curious instead of aggressive, their postures relaxed and their teeth hidden once more. None of them approached him, but none left either, so a strange stalemate was formed.

Cloud feinted towards the nearest of the monsters, a dog-like creature with two mouths full of spiny teeth and claws the size of its head, and it flinched away. But that was all it did – no snarl of warning, no display of teeth, no retaliation at all.

Stepping forward cautiously, Cloud tried to advance to the left, keeping the wall of the rock face to his back to avoid being surrounded. His theory proved true when the monsters moved around him, one darting forward to take advantage of the open crevice to follow Vahana down.

Swinging his sword to sever the thing clean in half, Cloud stepped back into his defensive position in front of the crevice. If he tried to distract them and lead them away, it would fail and Vahana would be hunted down– if he followed Vahana, there was nothing stopping the monsters from attacking as soon as she came into sight.

The monsters were quiet as they died.

None of them tried to harm him, only trying to duck behind to get into the crevice in the rock. Even as he chopped and sliced and swung, the most they did was dodge out of the way. For all that they were ugly and had been trying to tear Vahana apart only a few minutes ago, it was almost sad.

The only good thing was that it was quickly over.

Cloud wiped his weapon on the cold ground when the last one died and extracted a smaller blade from the main body of his sword. Securing the rest to his back, he made his way into the dark of the Crater.

Back when Cloud and AVALANCHE were fighting for the Planet, they fought Jenova puppets that were oozing and formless masses of shifting flesh. They were revolting creatures that reeked of the sickly sweet stench of rotting meat, unidentifiable as similar to anything else alive. The thing in front of Cloud and Vahana now, though, proved them to be a faint shadow of the thing in the Crater.

After half an hour at most, Cloud had come across the main body of the parasite that had landed there. Vahana was just staring, barely acknowledging him as he crouched behind her.

The thick black ooze that poured itself over the icy ground was somehow both solid and liquid – although it seemed to shift and move ceaselessly, the exploring tendrils frequently folded back on themselves with thick, meaty slaps to allow more to suck their way up the rock face with a wet slurp. The smell was horrific, methane and a sour tang at the back of the throat. Every now and then the impression of a face with the wrong number of eyes, or an arm with too many hands, or some other half-built mockery of living things would bubble up from within only to be dragged back into the darkness of the pool.

It was difficult to tell if he'd been seen, because it was difficult to tell if the thing had any eyes.

It didn't look anything like the deformed female figure of his time.

This wasn't something you could fight by hitting it with a sword. This wasn't even something you could burn to death. It was too big, too overwhelming.

How was it defeated before?

"I didn't realise it was like this," Vahana breathed out. "I didn't realise what this was."

"What do you want to do?" Cloud asked softly as he crouched down beside her.

"The Planet told me the last piece of what I need to do, while I waited for you. I think you should go back. I know what will happen now, and I don't think you need to see it." She turned her face towards him, and although she was smiling he could see the tears gathering.

"I'm not leaving you," he told her firmly. "You're not doing this alone."

"I will, I'm afraid," she laughed. "But thank you. I'm so glad you're here."

"What do you need me to do?"

"Nothing. Just, make sure nothing interrupts, okay?"

"Of course," he said, before standing and raising his sword to a ready position. "Ready when you are."

She nodded, breathed in deep, then stood and began to sing.

Cloud had never heard the song before, but it was almost familiar, like a song from his childhood being sung in a language he didn't know. She was unsteady at first, her fear overwhelming her skill, but as she progressed her voice grew stronger and stronger. He kept his eyes on the black mass that had so far ignored them, so missed the first subtle signs that something was happening.

By the time he realised what was going on, thick streams of palest green light had erupted over and through the walls of the Crater to pierce the darkness. The song Vahana was singing was echoed over and over into a sound that was almost physical in its effects.

That, he recognised.

Holy.

When Aerith had cast it, the Planet had been slow to respond thanks to Sephiroth's interference. Now, though, Jenova had no direct link to the Planet. With no son in the Lifestream to temper the Planet's rage, no reactors sucking the Planet dry, the effect was immediate, violent, and absolute.

It took a minute, no more, of the pure light flooding into the Crater before the ground started to convulse; it didn't matter whether it was Jenova's fury or the Planet trying to shake off the monster clinging to its skin, because either way it was sending rocks down the cliffside and threatening to hit both Cloud and Vahana.

Cloud chose to run to the side, but Vahana ran directly into the black mass of Jenova.

"Vahana! Get out!" he yelled, running over to the edge and trying to grab her arm to pull her out. She moved further in instead, eyes wide and afraid.

"No," she shouted back over the cacophony of voices, interrupting her song, "I know what to do! I know what I need to do! You need to run!"

Cloud didn't bother responding and he didn't bother trying to run. The inky black filth that was Jenova was being buffeted by the thick wide streams of light, shoved and pushed and pinned into an ever-smaller space. To his horror, it appeared to be shoving Jenova towards Vahana.

It took seconds for Jenova to start climbing up her legs.

Shakily, Vahana opened her mouth and continued to sing.

"Shut your mouth! Shut your mouth and run!" Cloud screamed, "I'll get you out! Shut your mouth and grab my hand!"

Instead, she stood there as the Lifestream battered Jenova into her, as the tendrils made their way up her legs and body to sink into her skin and wrap around her throat. Her face was left untouched as she carried on singing.

He screamed wordlessly, but he could see that the dark mass was slowly reducing. Either Vahana was absorbing the Calamity, or the Lifestream was compressing it into her. It didn't matter which, because the outcome was the same.

Cloud didn't notice the tendrils of light making their way towards him.

The first he knew of it was when one slammed into his back and catapulted him next to Vahana. He fell face first into the filth of Jenova's body, and retched on his hands and knees. Trying to stand was futile as he was struck over and over again, herded closer to Vahana and pummelled by the light.

There was no chance for him to escape, let alone escape with Vahana for Holy to finish its job.

Instead, he reached out to her and gripped her hand. Weakly, she curled her own around his, but from this vantage point he could see that her ability to move was curtailed by the slabs of crystallised mako that the Lifestream was building up around her. With most of Jenova's body inside Vahana, it appeared that the Planet was sealing her off.

Jenova took a woman's form.

Jenova took Vahana's body.

Jenova stole her body.

There was a moment of clarity in the noise and the light as Cloud realised something he should have understood before. The thing they called Jenova, the body that was dissected and beheaded and stripped of dignity, was Vahana.

I guess part of Sephiroth really was Ancient, after all. His hair and eyes really did come from his mother.

In that moment, part of Cloud let go of the struggle to survive. He just held Vahana's hand a little tighter and watched as the mako began to spiral and crystallise in the gaps between the slabs. He didn't let go when the same mako began to crawl down his arm, down his body, entwining around his legs.

He didn't let go as all he could see turned to shining, shifting green, and he unravelled into eternity, pulled away into the light.